BTC is currently trading around $45,000 and ETH around $2,400. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are LDO, ARB, and OP. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.76T, down 1.3% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$54b and BTC dominance is around 54%.
There was a flurry of confusion yesterday as the SEC tweeted out a false Bitcoin ETF approval notice after the market close, and then SEC Chair Gensler corrected the record shortly thereafter noting that Bitcoin ETFs are not approved and that the SEC’s official X account had been compromised. Many initially speculated that the approval order had been drafted by the SEC but inadvertently posted a day early, however, X confirmed the SEC’s account was indeed compromised because it did not have 2FA setup. While yesterday’s events will undoubtedly leave a blemish on the SEC’s record, we don’t anticipate it will impact the outcome for Bitcoin ETFs. The SEC must still either approve or deny the Ark/21Shares filing today (delay is not an option), and thus we continue to anticipate approval orders will come after the close today due to the Grayscale court verdict. If approved, trading may begin as soon as tomorrow morning. Elsewhere in Bitcoin ETF news, the fee wars continued unabated. BlackRock slashed its fee to 25 bps and further reduced its temporary fee waiver, while Ark cut its fee to 21 bps; Bitwise remains the low cost provider at 20bps.
Interestingly, the false rumor sparked a sell-the-news event in Bitcoin but sparked a sharp rally in Ethereum. This may be a shifting of narratives to the next beneficiary as Bitcoin approval falls into the rearview mirror while Ethereum ETFs are next up in May.
Notable news includes: Nomura’s Laser Digital and WebN Group unveiled their new fund tokenization infrastructure that’s powered by Polygon technology and will be used by Brevan Howard and Hamilton Lane in 1Q24; PayPal began incentivizing liquidity in the PYUSD-USDC pool on Curve; Cosmos developers proposed reducing the lower bound on ATOM’s inflation range to zero; Arbitrum Layer 3 gaming network XAI airdropped ~$70m of tokens; Decrypt and Rug Radio announced their intent to merge, creating the world’s largest decentralized publishing company; and, Dogecoin jumped 9% on a fake rumor that Kabuso, the dog in the meme behind the cryptocurrency had passed away.
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Authors:
Matt Kunke, Research Analyst | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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